Technical

We know, we know…we’re the American CERAMIC Society. But this bit of video from North Carolina State University (Raleigh), where researchers at the university have used 3D printing to produce free-standing structures made of liquid metal at room temperature, was just too cool to pass up. “It’s difficult to create structures out of liquids, because…

A lot of the basics of electrospinning have been figured out and it is relatively easy to use a desktop apparatus to spin mats of a particular material or even functionally graded materials, so a lot the recent emphasis on electrospinning has been devoted to scaling up these systems for mass production.

The University of Pennsylvania GRASP Lab released a video of flying robots maneuvering in swarm-like formations. The machines are called “Nano Quadrotors,” to reflect their small size (about the size of a small saucer) and their four helicopter-like rotors.

Apropos to the latest round of ash clouds spewing from the EyjafjallajökullI volcano, plus indications that some
utilities are going to be building new high-temperature fast-cycle gas turbines for peak electrical power generation, we offer this video that expands on a story I first wrote about in April.

Sinautec Automobile Technologies is making mini and full-scale municipal buses powered only by ultracapacitors, can be recharged by a mobile recharging unit that combines large photovoltaic array and a vertical wind turbine

Los Alamos National Lab has been working to develop high-volume production processes for making a thin, flexible tape that operates as a superconductor at liquid nitrogen temperatures and can carry 3 million amps per cm2.